Where were you?
by Native
Summary: In the aftermath of what happened with the Phoenix Five, Cyclops has time, Steve Rogers has blame, and Scott Summers is wondering. [Crossover Ultimate X-Men/Avengers Vs X-Men]


**Title**: Where were you?

**Author**: Native

**Genre**: Fix it — or break it, angst, canon!AU

**Rating**: K

**Note**: Spoilers for Ultimate X-Men and Avengers Vs X-Men. Use of backstory from Ultimate X-Men for... a kind of epilogue for AvX, I guess. Damn, this actually is kind of weird, but the idea wouldn't leave my head. ^^;

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**WHERE WERE YOU?  
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With Banshee, he had gotten the control he had dreamed of so many times before, and that was so freeing that he chose to keep himself from thinking about it after that. Jean had pulled him back, drowned him in her love, and it was good. Right. It was what counted.

When he feels the brush of the Phoenix's strength in him, his first thought is not of _control_ or _power_ or _victory_. It's _anger_ and _rage_ and _death_, it's suffering, it's _no,_ _please, no,_ because while the Phoenix has given him what he needed, it has also taken what _he_ needed, _taken her from him_. But Cyclops is not Scott Summers. Cyclops does what he has to; his feelings don't matter, only the battle - the battle, the survival and the war and the innocents tracked down by the government, the monsters of Weapon X and the thousands of things he thought about when he felt himself crumbling, torn in a multitude of directions. It gave him courage. It gave him heart_._ It killed him.

Scott Summers died a long time ago, he knows (_he remembers the taste of ash in his mouth, the exact moment_), and then he wonders about what would have happened if he had chosen to stay in the Savage Land, long before that. If he had kissed Wanda more than once. If he could have been _more_. _If I could have been better_. He wonders, he thinks and he sleeps because that's all that's left for him now, that and time. Mutants are not safe, but they're not on the brink of extinction anymore either, and it's something at least. He doesn't think often of the price, because he knows, deep down, that the fact that he _believes that it was worth it_ when he does tells something ugly about him. _Professor_, he calls sometimes, and _Jean_, even _Emma_ and it hurts, but not enough to make him anything but some kind of monster because there is no regret there, only grief.

He has accepted this, much like Erik did, he realizes one day. Everything is red and he's alone and there're barriers and nowhere to hide, and he thinks of Magneto, and he smiles and wants to hurl, howl and cry at the same time. Maybe he always had it in him, this grim determination, this will and this darkness - maybe that was what the other man had seen in him that wasn't in Pietro, and as Scott thinks _maybe_ he murmurs _yes, it was_ and he smiles a broken smile and closes his eyes behind the visor. All this doesn't really matter anymore; he can tastes _peace_, at last.

Steve Rogers comes see him one day. He tells him that there's going to be a summit, a reunion of sort, with mutant leaders, the Avengers, Fury, government officials. They're going to talk about the future, going to try and adapt to the world Scott dreamed and Cyclops carved in blood. There're new mutants all across the world, not all happy with what he did, sometimes miserable because of their mutation, actually, like before. It's his fault, Captain America says as if it would change anything, his fault if some poor soul has to leave his family or live with the guilt that comes with a deadly power that cannot be fully controlled at first. He talks and tells Scott of how he knows his story, thanks to Nick Fury, and how he doesn't understand how he could choose to submit others to what he's been through. There's going to be innocent deaths, maybe it's going to be worst than before, and it's all Scott's fault —

It's colder than ice, this feeling. It _burns_ and it _hurts_ but he doesn't flinch from it: he takes it _in_ and he makes it _his_ and he smiles and he says: "Where were you?"

He says this like it holds all the answers in the world. There is no mirth in the curve of his lips, no joy, only Scott brought back from the dead to look Steve Rogers in the eye and ask him why he let him die in the first place.

"Where were you when they hunted innocents with the Sentinels? Children, some of them, and their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, loved ones. Where were you when a man decided that he needed to make children fight for their right to exist? Where were you when they threw people in _camps_, when they made them less than animals, when they took their humanity away? Where were you then?"

Cyclops doesn't wait for Rogers to stop spluttering or start explaining himself. He has time, just not for this man (for his dreams and his deads and he takes it all, the responsability, everything, everything but this).

"You know the answer to this. And you, _you_ — you know that as long as I live and long after that, you will never be able to forget it."

Truth is that there's many other things that Scott would like to tell him. _Murderer_ is one. _Monster_ is another. He wants to ask him how, after having seen first hand what kind of evil the nazis were, he could stand by and do nothing. Ask him why he apparently didn't think mutants were worth saving. Ask him why he didn't treat them like innocents, why he didn't protect and serve them like he would have anyone else, probe him until he confesses something horrible, terrible, something that'd make him more than a _fucking coward_. He doesn't, though, because, all in all, he finds himself thinking that it really doesn't matter (and he doesn't think of how Hope was so quick to betray him to go to this people and what it tells about her, and, worst of all, _himself_). He's dying, he knows, dying the death of the man who's too tired to do anything else but wait, and all his thinking is only a conclusion, him looking back one last time. He knows this.

It doesn't matter.


End file.
